Interview: Caldera's Ransom Love

Ransom H. Love, President and CEO of
Caldera Systems, Inc. gave one of the keynotes at the OpenSource
Forum in Austin, Texas on June 30. He talked about the impact of
Linux and Open Source on businesses today. Later in the day, he
graciously gave me some of his time to discuss what we can expect
from Caldera now and in the future.

Margie: What are your
thoughts about today's conference?

Ransom: It's exciting to see
a conference focused on Linux in the enterprise. Just the fact that
there is a conference along those lines is quite a vindication, I
guess, that Linux is a valid business alternative which is kind of
our say. There wasn't a large number of attendees, but oftentimes
it's not the quantity but the quality of people looking and the
jury is still out on exactly what that means as far as ongoing
businesses and relationships.

Margie: Do you think they
will go away believing Linux is the answer?

Ransom: Well, you know, as
far as the information that has been presented, I think it's been
very solid, very focused, very good information. All the feedback
I've gotten from everybody in the conference has been very solid. I
don't know that anyone is going to be convinced, but I think they
are going to walk away and begin to evaluate. That's all you want
to achieve; if they can begin that cycle of evaluating, that's all
you need. You just need your foot in the door, because Linux works.
That's truly the goal and I think the conference has achieved that.
I think attendees were split almost half and half—half had already
deployed or were evaluating Linux, the other half were considering
it. I think they will begin the process.

Margie: On one of the last
panels, one of the speakers was saying that Linux wasn't
enterprise-ready at all. You needed to be there to tell him he was
wrong.

Ransom: I think the problem
is, what does “enterprise-ready” truly mean? Does it mean having
a list of features and functionalities that people want? Does it
mean it's stable enough? Does it mean it's scalable enough? To say
“enterprise-ready” is to say you have given it somebody's
definition. To me, it means it works; it does what it says it does.
There is no argument whatsoever that Linux does what you say it can
do. It's solid; it works; integrators and VARS deploy it as the
predominant platform for businesses all over the world. The
question becomes, does it have all the fine tuned options, such as
SMP, that other systems have? Does it have all the high intricate
file systems and other such things? No. But does that mean it's not
enterprise ready? No. Because there is an awful lot of
functionality that goes into the enterprise, but what you really
need is something that works.

Margie: Right. In your
discussion, one of the attendees asked if Linux is going to replace
NT for the desktop. I liked your answer and I thought you could
repeat it briefly here.

Ransom: Okay, very good. I
think the answer to that is the desktop itself has changed. It's
rapidly evolving from just a PC that is monolithic with a lot of
maps and memory, to being broken up. On the software side, the
browser itself is becoming the interface, and more and more
applications are being served down to the desktop from a server
environment using the Internet protocols. If that is where the
browser is going, then Linux is going to play a major role. Its
small footprint can be remotely managed, it is very stable and all
those applications can be fed to the browser as well as any other
platform. It's an excellent Java platform. So all of these
application servers being developed will feed those types of
applications out to a thin Linux environment. And it will play
very, very strongly. Even the new devices, the NCs, and such are
coming preloaded with Linux. Will it replace that large monolithic
PC? Maybe not, but who cares? At that point, Linux will play where
it plays well. It will add significant value in that shift, if the
desktop, as well as the server, changes form and comes into the
more economical, more manageable forms we are starting to
see.

Margie: You also talked
about standards and certifications. As part of your education
courses, you are going to offer certification. Are you doing this
in cooperation with LPI, or is this something you are doing
independently?

Ransom: No. As you know, we
are a platinum sponsor of LPI and played an integral role in
getting LPI set up, but they are an independent organization. We
want them to be an independent organization, because we want them
to supply an industry standard. So they are creating all the
certification testing. We aren't even going to touch that. What we
will provide is the educational courses necessary to give somebody
all the information they need in order to pass that certification.
Our courses are not OpenLinux-specific; they are Linux and designed
to teach someone how to become certified using the LPI standard. We
are working with LPI and contributing, financially and otherwise,
to create this certification. Then, in turn, we are creating the
coursework that can bring someone up to the knowledge they need to
pass those tests. So you get the benefits of all those. LPI
certification, open source, you can go through them and do the
tests yourself, but if you want some assistance, we can provide you
with literally 20 different courses that can get you trained and
educated so that you can feel comfortable taking and passing those
test suites.

Margie: And they are all
Linux in general, not Caldera-specific?

Ransom: Yes, Linux in
general. We feel it is critical that the standard be Linux. A
Linux-certified engineer means a heck of a lot more than being a
Red Hat or Caldera or SuSE engineer. For businesses, for
certification of an individual to have any kind of meaning, that
certification must have a lot of credibility. So that has been our
focus with education from the beginning. We're very excited about
the potential of LPI rolling out certification. The other aspect of
that is the channels to deliver that education, because many
corporations are worldwide, so they need to have educational
coursework worldwide. Our announcement last week with IBM where
they are going to roll these courses out through all of their
educational training centers is a significant and unique
announcement in this industry. So we are very excited about the
potential of that, because now, corporations and VARs and
integrators worldwide can deploy solutions and be able to get
people educated, trained and supported. Another aspect of that
announcement is IBM is doing worldwide support of OpenLinux—now we
have the mechanism to deploy solutions globally.

Margie: I thought that was
surprising too, because everybody thought IBM was just working with
Red Hat.

Ransom: No, and the
relationship with IBM is significant—let me make this clear—not
because they are playing favorites. They literally are playing with
all Linux providers. But because of our business model and our
focus on business, many aspects of the things we are doing match up
on a broader scale for what IBM wants to do. Thus, you'll see more
and more relationships with us. Anyone else could step up and offer
the same things if they had the same focus and business model as we
do. Again, this is just a confirmation of our focusing Linux for
business in the match you see now forming with IBM as we roll
forward. And you'll probably see that with other companies as well,
on that same level.

Margie: We received a good
response to our article on standards in the June issue. In
particular, your part of it, because you were willing to say more
than anyone else. You dominated the conversation, people liked it,
and as a result, see you as a leader in the Standards drive. Are
you just giving it lip service or do y'all actually have people on
the inside working with LSB?

Ransom: Well, Ralf Flaxa,
who is actually the head of our engineering team in Germany, is
heading up that whole reference platform, which we feel is a
critical part of that LSB certification. The reason being, because
as you agree to a written specification, you need a proof of
concept of that specification—to be sure it actually works and
everyone is happy with that specification. You can then do
re-integrations on the specification to improve and enhance it. We
have freed up Ralf—almost 100 percent of his time is now allocated
to working on the Linux Standard Base to help drive, manage and
chair it. He isn't the only one working on it, but he is the chair
and therefore we are trying to free up his time so that he can, in
fact, deliver the reference platform of the standard. In addition,
we have and will continue to provide resources to the Linux
Standard Base group of committees. For example, for their last
meeting we did fly a number of the Debian developers in to attend
the meeting, so they could all come together. We are expending
resources in other ways to try to facilitate and push and help
things along. IBM is also doing some wonderful things, now rallying
behind Linux Standard Base and working and collaborating with many
other ISVs. They are looking for ISVs to come in and help put
additional pressure into this area of standards. We are very
excited about that. ISVs are starting to become more vocal about
the needs and I think that will help others. Once people realize
that ISVs are serious and the applications need to be there—it's
just a matter of time and momentum—the pressure will bring about
significant movement. One of the reasons why we are so passionate
about that is we have worked with VARs from day one. The VAR
channel and system integrators have been key, because they have a
lot of those applications. We heard about this need a long time ago
because of our business focus. That's one of the reasons we have
been so vocal and such a strong advocate of standards.

Margie: Exactly what is your
Linux tour about? Y'all came by and saw us, is that demonstration
pretty much what you are doing everywhere?

Ransom: Well, we actually
have three different tours we are doing right now. One is the “I
Develop” tour with Oracle. We are the only Linux distribution
going worldwide to their “I Develop” conference. So, that's been
very positive and has some very good feedback among the developers
who are looking to develop and deploy Oracle solutions and related
solutions on top of Linux. We are also doing the Network
Professional Association tour, where they are touring the country
meeting with their affiliate groups and associate groups. They are
doing some significant evangelism, if you will, of OpenLinux and
education especially. They actually helped us develop our latest
administration course that allows someone coming in with an MSVE or
CNE background to get the specific training they need to bring them
up to speed on Linux. They actually helped us develop that course,
so they are out there helping us evangelize it through the Network
Professional Association. Our more significant tour is called the
OpenLinux tour. Ziff-Davis helped us host it through their
conferences and that side of their business. We've coordinated the
city-to-city tour ourselves, and IBM and Oracle are co-sponsors.
We've gone to eight cities already and we will be going to another
seven cities as part of that first phase. That has been very, very
successful. We obviously are targeting VARs and system integrators
in each of the cities, and we have had an excellent response. The
VARs are very enthusiastic about the fact that IBM and Oracle are
very serious about Linux. That gives it some validity and our
experience with the VAR and integration channels has a very strong
appeal. We know what the VARs want and how to help them drive
solutions on Linux. So we are pleased with the response.

Margie: When you came by to
see us, you showed us Caldera's new easy install, Lizard. Tell us
about that.

Ransom: That was when we
were actually rolling out our 2.2 product and the first part of
Lizard. We will have some exciting announcements coming up here as
we get ready to open source it. We don't want to just throw it out
there. We literally want it to be an interactive development kind
of thing, so that it can literally be a standard in Linux. So we
are creating an entire open-source site, so that developers can
interact with and maintain and keep it up. A lot of our open-source
projects are going to be moving on to that site and into electronic
format with more of a developer focus to give the support and the
ongoing maintenance of the technology an opportunity to be very
successful. There is an announcement that will be coming out soon.
So that's what we are doing. It's not just a matter of simply
publishing the source; we could do that. We truly want it to be
published in a way that is meaningful, so that developers can get
the information they need and good access to the technology. We are
doing a little more work there.

Margie: Is there a date when
this might happen?

Ransom: It's coming very
soon.

Margie: Very soon, okay,
that will do. How about new features that are as exciting as
Lizard? Do you have any of those coming up in the next
release?

Ransom: Well, obviously,
Lizard was the first integration of the product, so there are a lot
of things we didn't have time to put in the first release that we
are definitely going to see in the second release. We are very
excited about the enhancements we've been able to make to
Lizard—additional platforms, other kinds of things we can drive
there, so that's a big improvement. We have been able to put a lot
of other things into the product—things like unattended install.
Lizard is a wonderful thing for a one-time install, but many of our
VARs, integrators and the major OEMs want the ability to basically
install once and have it replicated across many units. So that's an
aspect we are putting into this next product. We have a few more
commercial applications, a few more upgrades to existing commercial
applications and things like that which will be made available.
There are a couple other features, but we are saving them. We think
they are really significant from a business perspective, but we
don't want to let the cat out of the bag too soon.

Margie: Okay, I understand
that. KDE is now a part of your distribution. Do you think the main
way to attract people to Linux is to look like Windows?

Ransom: Well, again, we
believe in providing Linux as a targeted solution. All of our
research on those people who are buying Linux—we have gathered a
lot of data—tells us that well over 50 percent of the people
buying Linux today are buying Linux and UNIX for the first time. On
our city-to-city tour, by the way, a lot of the VARs—well over 61
percent—are novices when it comes to UNIX; they don't even know
anything about it. The number of people who are moving from Windows
or wanting an alternative to Windows is significant. These people
are evaluating Linux. So what we've done with Linux is target those
first-time users in such a way as to give them an experience that
won't send them running away screaming. They are used to a
point-and-click interface and interaction with the system; they are
used to it all being graphical; they are used to a kind of
WYSIWYG-type environment, so we tried to deliver a solution that
would allow them to have a good experience. Now, that doesn't take
away any of the power of Linux. Underneath the covers, it's still
Linux. In fact, many of these things actually appeal to developers,
because they give them a more controlled environment, kind of a
single-product environment that they can optimize and play to their
heart's content. Now, you'll see us come out with other products
very soon that are again more targeted, that have a more WYSIWYG
first-time user graphical environment. You will see us come out
with a server environment that won't have a graphical environment,
but instead will be in a browser. It will be browser-based so that
the system can be headless and keyboardless, and you can deploy and
manage Linux completely remotely. So we extend code now to include
an entire web interface, not just the graphical KDE, and that's the
next phase you will see very shortly. We believe that for
businesses and VARs and others to get their hands around Linux, we
will do a lot of the packaging and focusing and creating a solution
so they can focus on adding to it. They do not have to manage Linux
or sort through all these different things to get their
solution—we give them a basic solution and they just add theirs to
it. What you are seeing is us trying to appeal to the market and
the customers who are now moving in and buying Linux for the first
time.

Margie: Last year, Caldera
split into two parts. Has that worked out?

Ransom: Yes, actually it
has. Well, what do you think about 2.2?

Margie: I like it.

Ransom: Has it worked
out?

Margie: Okay, I can't argue
with that.

Ransom: Actually, it's been
very good. It has allowed a lot of focus on the two different
areas. There is some significant difference between an
embedded-type application and the desktop server or even the
non-traditional PC-like devices that are being broken up. There are
differences there, and I think allowing us to focus down on the two
different areas has been very positive for both sides. The
thin-clients group has a wonderful set-top device they've
developed; the browser is highly optimized to achieve the
environment. It's a wonderful platform. We have been able to focus
on delivering real solutions that I think add value, not only to
ourselves, but to Linux in general as we publish Lizard and
everything back.

Margie: Is your Linux for
Business focus working? With your relationships with IBM and
Oracle, it certainly looks like it is.

Ransom: Yes, and I think
more than ever, the proof is in the pudding. What are you seeing?
What type of solutions are we delivering? What type of activities
are you seeing in and around what we are delivering? I think the
relationships and the products—not just OpenLinux 2.2, but the
educational products which have been released and announced, and
the many more coming—are the proof in the pudding. We are actually
delivering on our promises and commitments and getting solutions to
the market. People worldwide are recognizing the value of
OpenLinux. It's totally different from any other Linux out there.
There really is no comparison, and yet we are using the same
kernels and libraries—do you see what I'm saying? It is the focus
that makes the difference. I think that will pan out even more in
the coming days and weeks and months as more and more announcements
come out.

Margie: So are you seeing an
increase in market share?

Ransom: Oh, my goodness!
It's fun!

Margie: I'll take that as a
yes.

Ransom: Well, again, I don't
know that we are taking market share from anyone, but we are
definitely taking the new users who we are targeting. A lot of them
are coming over and taking a look and evaluating. We are definitely
appealing to the VARs and systems integrators worldwide, who we are
also targeting. That's our customer. It's not that it's at the
expense of anyone else—I guess it is in some degree, because we
are taking a larger percentage of the new consumer of Linux.

Margie: Tell us a bit about
Caldera's business philosophy.

Ransom: Well, to give you an
idea, we kind of believe the kernel and the underlying
infrastructure needs to be and should be open source—there is no
question about it. It adds so much value to the application
providers, the solution providers, everyone, because having an open
source allows them to optimize, customise and deploy solutions more
effectively. Where we differ from some is that we believe there is
a role and place for binary-only applications and solutions or
proprietary hardware components—a very important role. Billions of
dollars are spent, you know. We shouldn't run away screaming,
saying that is bad, that is taboo. Because there is significant
value in a solution that the combination has put together to solve
a business need that you may or may not get from a pure open-source
model. It may be years; how do you provide incentives for people to
work on some aspects that just aren't appealing? So there is an
element and a need for both proprietary and open-source software.
The models should be used where they make sense, and the
combination which creates the best solution for the customer, the
best solution for the industry and everybody involved. That's where
we vary a little bit from some. We feel very strongly that to solve
business solutions, to solve the customer needs, the best of both
worlds is really the right approach.

2.2 is a prime example; we have Power Quest and
PartitionMagic, which give a non-destructive, on-the-fly resizing.
Well, we don't have those partitioning tools yet in an open-source
fashion that give you the same level of confidence with the same
level of interface. Why not take Linux with all of its beauty and
functionality and couple it with this? Now, you've created a real
solution that a greater majority of people can use today. So the
combination is good.

Another example is Apache/IBM; you have the security aspects
of that which will never be open source. Is that bad? No! The whole
nature of the reason it's not is that it's secure! You can't open
source it. So, is that wrong? Is that bad? No. It has a value, and
the combination of the two make perfect sense as a business
opportunity and solution. I'll fight with the best of them on
protecting open standards and maintaining the basic kernel core as
open source, because that's the value of the whole model. But I
think we need to develop interfaces that allow for binary
interaction—that it's not just open source and forcing open
source. Another example: we have all these major players coming in,
and we have meetings with nearly all of them. They are very excited
about trying to help Linux move forward. They are looking at
publishing technologies that would take years to develop, just as a
good gesture to contribute back to the community and add value.
They want Linux to succeed. But you know what? There are some
aspects they will never publish, nor do they want to, nor does it
make sense for them to do so. Is that bad? No; you get the benefit
of all this technology and all the knowledge, and the customer gets
the solutions because they are all integrated. That's great; let's
evaluate each one and not throw up official barriers.

Margie: Will Caldera be
going public?

Ransom: I think it's
everybody's dream to go public, especially in the software
industry. Frankly, my major goal for our company is to be a valid,
viable business and let the natural consequences take place from
that. There is no question that we, like every software company on
the planet, are preparing ourselves for the eventuality of doing
something bigger, grander and better. Our model is a little
different than others; it's not a rush to get out and be the first
one to do an IPO. That's not the issue. When we do an IPO, we want
it to be a solid business decision with solid business solutions
surrounding it that can sustain an IPO. I guess we are a little bit
more conservative in some ways in that we are going to take the
time to forge the relationships, to build the business, to deliver
the solution, so that when we do an IPO, we are doing it to fund
the business and not to buy one.

I think there are many companies preparing themselves for
IPOs. I think that is great. I won't lie to you; we will do
everything in our power, but we'll do it when it's right for the
business and we feel we have a sustainable business moving forward.
And we do now, as far as the numbers, we are looking fine, but we
are in a phase of maturation. It's important to see what we look
like after we go through puberty!

Margie: Sounds good. Last
question: what did you have for breakfast this morning?